1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a printer server and a print system, and more particularly to a printer server connected to a radio device such as a printer by using radio and a print system including such a printer server.
2. Description of the Related Art
A connection standard that a computer and a printer are connected together by radio instead of a wire cable is proposed. For example, there is an IEEE 802.11b standard as this connection standard. In such a wireless environment, a user can transmit a print data from the computer to the printer via radio.
This is a one-to-one relationship between the computer and the printer, however, another connection standard is also proposed to constitute a wireless LAN (Local Area Network) so that one or more computers and one or more printers are connected via radio in the wireless LAN. In such a wireless environment, a printer sever and the printers are connected together by the wireless LAN. In this case, a print data transmitted from the computer to the printer server is transmitted to the printer by using radio.
In a case where a plurality of printers are connected to one printer sever, a communication performance between the printers and the printer sever is significantly different in accordance with a radio environment of neighborhood. Because, in the radio communication, there is a possibility that a device radiating other radio exits in the neighborhood, so that radio interference and/or noise caused by such radio have a great influence on the communication performance between the printer sever and the printers. Therefore, the communication performance for transmitting a print data to the printer is dynamically changed in accordance with time and/or setting environment.
In general, in the wireless LAN environment, it is known that the performance in the situation of bad communication performance is less than one fifth of that in the situation of good communication performance. If a user performs the print operation in such bad communication performance, its waiting time for the print is longer than five times of a waiting time in the good communication performance at the maximum.